Some works have titles that are just really easy to have fun with. All you have to do is replace a word or two, and there you go - instant funny title!

With other works... Well, substitute "well-known" for "easy to have fun with", and "memorable" for "funny". After all, what better way could there be to make people remember the title of your new work than making it a Shout-Out to a William Shakespeare title?

In other words, this is about the phenomenon of the title of a work being used as a template for other titles. The key feature is that the structure of the title is distinctive enough that even when replacing one or more words, it's still obvious what the reference is.

More generally, popular phrases with a variable element used in this manner as templates are termed "snowclones". See The Other Wiki.

All This and Puppet Stew, an album by Los Angeles punk rock band The Dickies.

All This and Everest Too, an actual newspaper headline printed on the morning of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, referring to the British expedition becoming the first to reach the summit of Mount Everest a few days earlier.

The '80s shirt that said "ALL THIS AND BRAINS TOO".

X, Lies and Videotape - starting with sex, lies, and videotape. While "Sex" is usually the word replaced with something that sounds similar (or even not-so-similar), all three have been used at times:

Aversion: "One of Our Submarines", a song by Thomas Dolby, omits the last two words from the title, but includes them in the lyric.

A group called Local Heroes, featuring various ex-members of The Shadows and other veteran guitarists, have released albums called One of Our Shadows is Missing, Two of Our Shadows are Missing and Three of Our Shadows are Missing.

In the Discworld book Maskerade, Nanny Ogg writes The Joye of Snackes - as a cookbook where every recipe is either an aphrodisiac, a double entendre, or both, it manages to reference both of this template's originals.

A BBC documentary about statistics, and how it doesn't have to be boring, is called "The Joy of Stats".

The Joy of Signing is a guidebook for learning American Sign Language.

In The Front Page, a Freudian psychiatrist publishes The Joy of Impotence after being shot in the groin.

The Joy of Lex is a book about fun with words (think 'lexicon').

And, to end off all this madness, someone wrote a book actually titled The Joy of x... said book was about algebra and calculus.

Another one titled The Joy of X is about the X Window System.

There was a spate of Everything You Always Wanted to Know About X (But Were Afraid to Ask) - starting with the sex manual Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex....

Charmed featured "Everything You Wanted To Know About Magic Portals (but were afraid to ask)".

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe considers The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy to be more controversial than a book titled Everything You Never Wanted to Know About Sex but Have Been Forced to Find Out.

Everything You Wanted to Know About Guilt but were too ashamed to ask

The book Fight by Eugene Robinson has the subtitle Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Ass-Kicking but Were Afraid You'd Get Your Ass Kicked for Asking.

There was a TV special called Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Jack Benny But Were Afraid to Ask.

There is a documentary called Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Computers... But Were Afraid to Ask.

There is a Czechoslovakian film called Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid to Experience.

There is a short documentary called Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Swing But Were Afraid to Ask.

X for Dummies (Note that the publisher has actually trademarked the phrase "for Dummies", so actual published works with this formula do not exist outside of the official series. Ironically, there is no such volume about ventriloquism.)

Witchhunting For Dumb People (Discworld again) doesn't take any chances.

The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Pirates, a Fictional Document from Schlock Mercenary. At least, until it was retconned into The Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries after the author got a cease-and-desist notice from the creators of the original Seven Habits of Highly Effective People book.

Zen and the Art of X - starting with Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, which itself refers back to Zen in the Art of Archery by Eugen Herrigel. The title of the latter is often quoted with an "and" instead of "in".

The Compleat Turkey, a book of cartoons by Sandra Boynton illustrating irritating types of people by comparing them to turkeys. The turkey on the cover is insisting that the title should be spelled "complete", for example.

Many, many examples are subtitled like this in the Star Wars Expanded Universe anthologies Tales from the Mos Eisley Cantina, Tales from Jabba's Palace and Tales of the Bounty Hunters.

All the stories in the Doctor Who Expanded Universe collection Short Trips: Repercussions have the slight variant of "The X's Story". The X in each case is someone who Charley meets in the Framing Story, and who tells her the story of why they had to be removed from time.

The historical mystery series by Margaret Frazer featuring the nun Sister Frevisse all have "The X's Tale" titles ... and are set in the 15th century, just a generation or two after Chaucer.

Enya's "Book of Days". The music video for it takes the idea and runs with it by showing a whole series of books cataloguing said days (aspects of life): Book of Water, Book of Love, Book of Music, Book of Motion, Book of Dreams.

During the John Fugelsang/Daisy Fuentes period, America's Funniest Home Videos had a regular segment called 'The Book of Why', where each clip started with John narrating "Why X (insert clip-related item here)"

The four parts Pyramids are "Book I: The Book of Going Forth", "Book II: The Book of the Dead", "Book III: The Book of the New Son", and "Book IV: The Book of 101 Things for a Boy Can Do". The first two parody the Ancient EgyptianBook of Going Forth by Day also known as The Book of the Dead, the third is a Shout-Out to Gene Wolfe, and the Odd Name Out is an obvious parody of kids' activity books.

The Book of Going Forth Around Elevenish was mentioned in The Light Fantastic as being written by a rather lazy sect.

What Every Young X Ought to Know — started by What a Young Husband Ought to Know by Sylvanus Stall and similarly-titled books in the Self and Sex Series of "social hygiene" books published around the turn of the 20th century

In Bell Book And Candle, Shep tells Nicky he should call the book he's collaborating with Redlich on What Every Young Witch Ought to Know.

In Of Thee I Sing, Wintergreen claims to be writing a book titled What Every Young President Ought to Know.

Uncle Dynamite by P. G. Wodehouse makes mention of What Every Young Policeman Ought to Know.

The Un-X-able Y-ness of Z — started with The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera

'Tis Pity She's a(n) X - starting with the 17th-century play Tis Pity Shes A Whore. Just replace the last word - the preference is for words that rhyme with 'whore' but it's also popular to insult other professions and nationalities.

Terry Pratchett has 'Tis Pity She's a Tree (this could well be talking about the tree spirits Dryads) and 'Tis Pity She's an Instructor in Unarmed Combat, both from Discworld novels.

'Tis Pity She's a Neighbor

'Tis Pity She's a Void

'Tis Pity She's a Ho

'Tis Pity She's a Bore

'Tis Pity She's a Carl

'Tis Pity She's a Dog

'Tis Pity She's a Hawes

'Tis Pity She's a Horticulturalist

A character in Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell suggests a play about the Back from the Dead Lady Pole called 'Tis Pity She's a Corpse.

The Egg And I, a 1945 book by Betty MacDonald, and the classic screwball comedy movie based on it which introduced Ma and Pa Kettle. The book actually predates The King And I by six years, but it's unlikely that it influenced the titling of the musical.

MacDonald herself called her account of her time in a TB hospital The Plague And I.

More than likely, every DJ Hero player reading this immediately thought of the mix of Groundhog by Noisia. "So you want to be a DJ... It's going to take an awful lot of practice..."

There are several short films with this title format, including So You Want to Be a Detective, So You Want to Be a Baby Sitter, So You Want to Be a Bachelor, So You Want to Be a Cowboy, So You Want to Be a Gambler, and So You Want to Be a Handy Man.

X Considered Harmful is a popular naming convention in Computer Science circles. Originating from Edsger Dijkstra's letter Go To Statement Considered Harmful, nowadays it's possible to find Considered Harmful articles concerning almost anything computer-related.

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